The Return of Manufacturing Jobs to the U.S.

Robots winning the race for American jobs. Technology is killing jobs, and only technology can save them.

These are just a few of the headlines hitting computer screens everywhere and a common fear among Americans. A recent report by McKinsey found that 49% of worker activities can be turned over to a machine or robot. A big industry where Americans fear this happening is manufacturing.

At ZipRecruiter, our goal is to help people find meaningful work and help employers build great companies. While we mentioned some of the scarier headlines above, there are some positive ones too. Robots won’t take your job—they’ll help make room for meaningful work instead.

Measured by real employment numbers, American manufacturing jobs have been on the decline since 1979. Over the second half of the twentieth century, U.S. based manufacturing workers became more expensive to hire than workers in developing countries and as you would expect, companies chose to move most manufacturing jobs to foreign soil.

Using our internal data, we sought out to find which manufacturing jobs are in demand and where they are in the U.S. to shed light on the topic.

Additionally, our CEO, Ian Siegel, penned a piece on Medium on the topic; you can read it here.

In the meantime, see below for a current snapshot of manufacturing industry and what types of jobs are available and where they are:

The top 10 most available jobs in manufacturing on ZipRecruiter right now are:

Surprised to hear that Los Angeles comes in first in terms of where to find a manufacturing job? LA is followed by Chicago, IL, Detroit, MI and New York, NY.